"In my time, I can tell you," said Uncle Julius, "there was no shilly shallying in these matters. We had more blood. Let any college lad be given a free day--and a fine day, too--and one of the prettiest girls that ever wore a petticoat to enjoy It with him, and he was the envy of all his fellows. And I believe," he ended with a fine optimism, "that it is so now! Not one of these lads but would change places with you at a nod." 

"But you will not nod, my dear Uncle Julius," Antony responded 5 calmly, "and so these lads--as you so felicitously call them--will never lose the opportunity I would cheerfully relin----" 

5

"Hush! there she is!" his uncle whispered, and Antony at once removed his hat with a lordly and accomplished gesture, which Uncle Julius noted with unwilling admiration. 

"Well, here we are!" he said, with an attempt at prankish levity in which he received no assistance from Antony. "Here we are at last, Nette dear, dressed in our best for you!" 

"So I see. And this is, I suppose, your young nephew, Mr. Julius?" said the person at whose face Antony had not yet looked. 

If she had intended to remedy this omission she could not have devised a more efficacious means. Not only did Antony look at her: he stared. From the topmost strand of her braided chestnut hair to the lowest dimple In her olive cheek--for she was of that irritatingly attractive class of females that combines deep-set violet eyes with a gipsy colouring--every curve of her audacious body spelled youth, unmitigated youth, and her tone was correspondingly insulting. 6 

6

"I am truly pleased to meet you," he said with the air of one to whom experience has lent tolerance. 

"I should truly never have guessed it," she returned promptly with an amused smile. 

Antony flushed. An impudent chit, this. A girl to be taught her place, and that right early. 

"I am to have, I believe," he said, with a fine air of disregard for any previous conversation, "the honour of escort--of show--of, er, of entertaining you for the day." 

"That distinction is indeed yours," she replied gravely, "I have no doubt that I shall be escort--show--er, entertained most agreeably." 

With this insulting remark she 

 Prev. P 4/52 next